CLASSICAL ART

Cycladic • Cycladic art is the art and

sculpture of the ancient Cycladic civilization, existing in the islands of the Aegean Sea from 3300 - 2000 BCE. Art mainly manifested itself in the form of marble idols, often used as offerings to the dead. Idols possessed a flat, geometric quality, giving them a striking resemblance to today's modern art. A majority of the figurines are female, depicted nude, and with arms folded across the stomach. It is unknown whether these idols depict a goddess, or merely Cycladic women.

Daedalic/Daedelic Style• figurative sculpture

attributed by later Greeks to the legendary Greek artist Daedalus

• associated with Bronze Age Crete and early Archaic sculpture in Greece.

• Daedalic sculpture displays Eastern (“Orientalizing”) influences: – wiglike hair, large eyes,

and prominent nose; the female body is flatly geometric formless drapery.

• The style was used in figurines, on clay plaques, and in relief decoration on vases.

Lady of Auxerre

650 - 625 BC

Korai • Kore (Greek - Κόρη -

maiden; plural korai) is the name given to a type of ancient Greek sculpture of the Archaic period

• show the restrained “archaic smile”

• unlike the nude kouroi - korai are depicted in thick drapery, ornate and (in painted examples) very colorful and often have elaborate braided hairdos

Korai• Some of the hair styles

of the statues are quite Egyptian and Minoan in style and often resembling the hairstyle of the Gorgon

• often have a much more relaxed and natural posture, sometimes with an extended arm

• Some were painted, with colourful drapery and their skin having a natural coloring

Peplos Kore

• Peplophoros

Moschophoros

Kritios Boy

Meniskos

• (Greek μηνισκος, plural Meniskoi, meaning crescent moon)

• Since many Greek statues were displayed outside, the meniskos served the simple purpose of preventing bird droppings from accumulating on the statue.

Gorgoneion • stone head, engraving or drawing

of a Gorgon face, often with snakes protruding wildly and tongue sticking out between the

fangs

Polykleitos

• Polykleitos (the Elder)• Greek sculptor in bronze of the fifth • He was of the school of Argos• a contemporary of Phidias • Known for his use of contrapposto

Polykleitos

• works: Doryphoros (or spear-carrier), Diadumenos (diadem-bearer), and Discophoros (disc-bearer: DO NOT CONFUSE WITH Discobolus), gold/ivory statue of Hera in Heraion of Argos temple

Doryphoros

“The Cannon”

Doryphoros•Known as the Spear-Bearer and the Canon

• displays Contrapposto (standing with most of its weight on one foot so that its shoulders and arms twist off-axis from the hips and legs)

•example of the "canon" or "rule", showing the perfectly harmonious and balanced proportions

•original bronze statue lost

•the surviving (Roman) marble copies: a marble tree stump is added to support the weight of the marble

Canon

• “Beauty, Chrysippos believes, inheres... in the commensurability of the parts, such as that of finger to finger, and all these to the palm and wrist, and of these to the forearm, and of the forearm to the upper arm, and of everything to everything else, just as it is written in the "Canon" of Polykleitos. For having taught us in that treatise all the commensurate proportions of the body, Polykleitos made a work to support his account; he made a statue according to the tenets of his writing, and called it, like the treatise, the "Canon".

--Galen

Praxiteles

• was the most renowned of the Attic sculptors of the 4th century BC

• the first to sculpt the nude female form in a life-size statue

Skopas

• Scopas or Skopas (Σκόπας) (c.395 BC-350 BC) was a sculptor and architect

• born on the island of Paros.• worked with Praxiteles• he sculpted parts of the Mausoleum of

Halicarnassus, • led the building of the new temple of

Athena at Tegea. • successor of Polykleitos • Figures tend to have deeply sunken eyes

and a slightly opened mouth

Lysippos

• Greek sculptor of the 4th century BC • Considered with Lysippos, Skopas and

Praxiteles to be the three great sculptors of the Classical Greek era, who brought a transition into the Hellenistic era

• Successor of Polykleitos• During his life Lysippos was the

personal sculptor of Alexander the Great

Ludovisi Ares

Lysippos

• born at Sikyon around 390 BC • worker in bronze in his youth, he

taught himself the art of sculpture, later becoming head of the school of Argos and Sikyon

• Works: attributed to him are the so-called Horses of Saint Mark; Eros Stringing the Bow, Agias, the similar Oil pourer, the Farnese Herakles, and The Scraper

Apoxyomenos

• the "Scraper") the "Scraper")

•Also known as the "Scraper“

•athlete, caught in the familiar act of scraping sweat and dust from his body with the small curved instrument that the Romans called a strigil.

•The bronze original lost

•represented by the Pentelic marble copy in the Museo Pio-Clementino in Rome, discovered in 1849 Q

•known, in part from its description in Pliny the Elder's Natural History,

•Roman general Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa installed Lysippos's masterpiece in the Baths of Agrippa that he erected in Rome, around 20 BCE

•the emperor Tiberius had it removed to his bedroom. However an uproar in the theatre, "Give us back our Apoxyomenos", shamed the emperor into replacing it.

Lysippos

• Pliny the Elder says he produced 1500+ works (in bronze)

• His pupil, Chares of Lindos (constructed the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven ancient wonders of the world)

Parthenon

Kanephoros

• "Basket Bearer", also known as Canephorae • honorific office given to unmarried young women in ancient

Greece (privilege of leading the procession to sacrifice at festivals)

• the highest honour was to lead the pompe at the Panathenaic Festival – role was given to a virgin selected from amongst the

aristocratic or Eupatrid families of Athens whose purity and youth was thought essential to ensure a successful sacrifice

– Her task was to carry a basket (kanoun), which contained the offering of barley or first fruits, the sacrificial knife and fillets to decorate the bull in procession through the city up to the altar on the acropolis

Caryatids

• sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head

• Classical examples include the treasuries of Delphi and the Erectheion

Caryatid from the Erechtheion’s Porch of

the Maidens

Ganosis

Pantheon

• (Latin Pantheon, from Greek Πάνθεον Pantheon, meaning "Temple of all the gods")

• in Rome • originally built as a

temple to the seven major gods of

Pantheon

• Architect uncertain:• largely credited to

Trajan's architect Apollodorus of Damascus

• rumored that the emperor Hadrian had a hand in the design

• Christian church since 7th century

Panthenon History• After the Battle of Actium (31 BC), Agrippa built and dedicated the original

Pantheon during his third consulship (27 BC)• Agrippa's Pantheon was destroyed along with other buildings in a huge fire

in 80 AD• current building dates from about 125 AD, during the reign of the Emperor

Hadrian, as date-stamps on the bricks reveal• reconstructed with the text of the original inscription

("M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT" meaning, "Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, three times consul made it")

Pantheon

• “Agrippa finished the construction of the building called the Pantheon. It has this name, perhaps because it received among the images which decorated it the statues of many gods, including Mars and Venus; but my own opinion of the name is that, because of its vaulted roof, it resembles the heavens.” (Cassius Dio History of Rome 53.27.2)

Panthenon

• later repaired by Septimius Severus and Caracalla in 202 AD, for which there is another, smaller inscription. This inscription reads "pantheum vetustate corruptum cum omni cultu restituerunt" ('with every refinement they restored the Pantheon worn by age').

Parthenon